Everything you need to know about looking after your…

We’re writing this post to summarise some questions people have about buying, owning and caring for Scramble merchandise.

This includes looking after your jiu jitsu kimono, looking after your rash wear, and looking after your clothing.

It also covers our general returns / exchanges policy.

Firstly, what to do when you receive your Scramble goods.

1) Check that we have sent out the correct size / colour / model. Sometimes, mistakes happen. We’re often overloaded keeping the unicorns fed and / or training wrestling with Siberian mountain ligers and thus our attention can waver when packing bags. If you find anything immediately wrong, email us.

2) Check that the size you ordered, is right for you. If you take it out of the bag and the size is clearly wrong, email us.

Now you have got the right goods in the right size and the right colour. Have a check for loose threads. I’m going to break some important news to you now. If you get a loose thread, you can take a sharp pair of scissors and snip it off. That’s it. We sometimes get emails where people want exchanges because of something as simple as a loose thread. Don’t get me wrong – we bend over backwards to keep our customers happy, it’s part of what gives us job satisfaction (that, and the huge swimming pool filled with gold coins that we spend most of the day diving into). But asking for a return on something so small is counter-productive for all involved. Please take some ownership over the products you buy. C’mon people, you practice jiu jitsu. You can snip a few loose threads off. Don’t be scared, homie.

Of course, if there are faults in the product, stitching is way off, or an arm is stitched where a leg should be, or we printed our logo upside down / inside out, email us straight away. We stand by the quality of our products and it’s never a gamble when you buy from us – you will get the product you wanted, even if we need to replace it for you. If you ask around you should find stories of how we look after our customers. Even if you’ve used it, if it didn’t stand up to expectations, we will help you out.

It’s a good idea, too, to wash the product before you first use it. This can help get out any dust or dirt that may have settled on the garment during production or transport, and can also make sure there is not any ink or anything like that that may not have set or dried perfectly into the garment. (Sublimation printing is a tricky business.) Always wash on a low temperature and with similar colours.

We also recommend that you contact us before you take extreme close up photographs and write a blog about a fault. Nine (sometimes ten) times out of ten, if you have a fault and email us, we will simply replace the product for you. If you find a fault, buy the domain www.scramblestuffsucks.com, publish eleventy hundred megabyte photographs (with annotations) of the fault, and then share the link on Sherdog, the Underground, and facebook, but don’t contact us, then we won’t be able to help you.

Looking after your rash guard / spats / vale tudo shorts / “Lycra” stuff. 

Our rash wear is made from a blend of polyester and elasthene. Some brands say they have Lycra in, but I bet they don’t. Lycra is a registered trade mark for a type of spandex / elasthene.  Not to give away too many trade secrets, but over the years, we have refined the material into what we feel is the best balance of weight, strength, and receptiveness to ink. To put things very basically, polyester (as we understand it) is made of short fibres. Those short fibres are liable to “pilling”. This is when small white bobbles of fabric work themselves out of the main panel of fabric. This happens during training. You can lessen the likelihood of it happening by using higher quality polyester with special treatments applied (like we do.) But, it will happen eventually. There is no way around it. Ways to avoid this pilling include:

1) Avoid velcro. Velcro just loves pulling out the little polyester fibres and can completely ruin a pair of spats or a rash guard. Do not wash your spats or rash guard next to a pair of MMA shorts with velcro strips.

2) Wash inside a delicates net. Just throw your rash wear into one of those nets and it will stop the threads and the polyester from getting torn up in the washing machine.

3) Don’t train, simply put the spats or rash guard in a frame and hang on your wall. This will keep them looking brand new for hundreds of years! Bonus: you’ll also be called a weirdo by your friends.

4) Watch our for loose threads. When we train, our training wear takes serious punishment. Snipping off a loose thread can stop damage from multiplying.

Looking after your Scramble jiu jitsu gi.

There are many, many articles out there talking about how to wash and look after gis. Have a google. Here are a couple of extra tips that I have picked up over the years.

1) Should I put vinegar on my gi to set the colour / kill the demons living on it?

I occasionally use vinegar. I use it to banish the evil spirits that can start to lurk on a gi that is getting on in age. I do not believe that it is possible to damage your gi with vinegar, so I don’t mind recommending it. Sometimes I will wash the gi once and let it dry. Then, soak it overnight in a bathtub filled with water and approximately a shit load of white vinegar thrown in. Drain the next day and wash again, your gi should have a new lease of life. Some people also use vinegar to set colours – I am not sure if this works or not. But never in my experience has vinegar damaged a gi. And once you wash it, the smell is gone.

2) Should I put it in on hot then tumble dry it, then have a steamroller drive over it and throw it out of a moving plane?

No. I have never washed a gi on hot or tumble dried it. Except once when I was staying in Tokyo and my gi came out looking like a Miyao brothers gi (sleeves by my elbows, trouser cuffs by my knees) and with bobbles on it. I do not recommend washing your gi in hot water or tumble drying it, except if you want to shrink it, and even then, it’s at your own risk.

I can also recommend you washing your gi inside out occasionally. You sweat on the inside, so that’s the part that needs washing.

The best way to dry a gi is to hang it up in the sunshine. If, like me, you live in the UK and never see the sun, then hanging it up outside in the cold, cold wind is also acceptable. The weak sun rays may just penetrate the cloud cover for a split second and provide some drying power.

A quick note about shrinkage:

Gold weave shrinks more than twill/drill, which shrinks more than pearl weave, which shrinks more than ripstop. Ripstop won’t shrink much due to the density of the weave (I think.) Conversely gold weave is often quite loosely woven and so will experience shrinking more.

We’ve also had people in the past who find the gi fits perfectly but the trousers are an inch too long. (quick aside: remember, the gi that fits you horribly, might fit the next customer perfectly. Please remember that next time you update your blog on www.scramblestuffsucks.com and tell everyone that we have the worst fitting gis of all time.) All you need to do, is find a tailor (in the UK, most dry cleaners also offer alterations) and get them to take up the trousers. Explain to them that it’s martial arts so they need to double or triple stitch them. Et voila, your gi now fits you perfectly, and you get the sense of satisfaction from having fixed it yourself (instead of sending the gi back to us and being miserable.)

Caring for your Scramble apparel

Most of our garments come with a care label, but as a general rule of thumb:

1) Wash low. This reduces the risk of shrinkage and colour leakage.

2) Wash with like colours.

3) Do not iron over prints or decorations

4) Read passages from hard-hitting biographies or beatnik literature at least twice a day to your Scramble garments. Ensure that the garment is in front of the computer for at least an hour a day checking YouTube for BJJ instructionals.

I think that about covers it.